Folks, regarding the recent History Channel MonsterQuest episode of March
10th featuring Fred May, Frank Feschino, Stanton Friedman, and other
witnesses from the town of Flatwoods, West Virginia: I was the bearded
fellow, the only one, I think, associated with the Flatwoods segment
exclusively. I wore the UFO Magazine hat. I was working with the Helium
Balloon and assisting Feschino vis a vis the sighting at the hunter's camp
in deep forest beside the spring fed stream. My one spoken line, used apart
from where I actually said it was, "Frank, there's a hot spot up there...,"
or some such... all that said:
Folks? You can quote me!
I have no idea what that program was about! Why, apart from a true to form
Joe Nickell, I didn't even recognize who was involved in it!
This is _real_ irony, reader, given I was at Flatwoods for a week during the
shooting -and I do mean shooting- of the MQ program. Moreover, I have an
appropriate intimacy with all the principals shown on the Flatwoods segment,
and have better than a layman's understanding of just what occurred in and
around Flatwoods that Indian summer night in 1952.
Ladies and Gentleman, let me digress to say that, entirely apart from what
the Reader saw on a "flawed" MonsterQuest, THIS is what occurred on that one
night in Flatwoods in Flatwoods:
http://paratopiary.blogspot.com/I remind the HONEST reader that this referenced map data is supported by
Project Bluebook, named Newspaper reportage, and first person witnesses in
that order of numeracy.
The History Channel, one finds, had the time, opportunity, and all the
requisite data to produce a stunning program about the infamous Flatwoods
affair. What the History channel did instead, reader, was to contrive to
manufacture a senseless "mash-up" of two entirely unrelated cases from what
could be most easily be "faux-discredited" in either of them. Suggesting
this bogus relationship, one not even remotely tenuous, is the program's
kiss of less-than-mediocre death.
Sincerely, none but those entirely honest with themselves dare call this
very poor, contrived, and inauspicious telling of the Flatwoods story a
blithering incompetence, a fatuous cluelessness, or a distorted propaganda!
More irony is revealed given Feschino, Friedman, and I had to sign sworn
statements indicating our contribution to the program was true as we knew it
to be true. The History Channel reportage of same, paradoxically, was not.
See? Flatwoods was the tail end of the biggest UFO Flap in US History: The
1952 "Summer Of Saucers" chronicled by Frank Feschino, Wendy Connors,
various other authors, and an un-sifted Project Bluebook. Reader! It was
_not_ about "Lizard Monsters" allegedly lurking the woods for 60 plus years,
and to this day. This is the distortion prosecuted by the History Channel.
And this! The intrepid MonsterQuest documentarians wrongly called the more
honest Stanton Friedman a "doctor" and made the dissembling (to be kind) Dr.
(degree immaterial) Nickell look "reasonable" in contrived comparison!
Glowing eyes? Not before or since. Ground miasma? Not before or since!
Mass hysteria? Not before or since! Noxious weeds? Not before or since!
Roc sized barn owls? Not before or since! How could they have got things
so canted and wrong!
I'm sick at heart and really ticked off... Feschino, who deserves better
than this, was fit to be tied. See, he's telling the culture changing real
story. Nickell and company shill for the guys insulting the reader's
intelligence and obscuring real history. Case in point "Mass Hysteria" as
touted by Dr. Nickell... is a clueless dodge.
Why? The witnesses at Flatwoods, a gang of playing children and a couple of
young adults, presupposed a meteor, predominantly, on the Fisher farm in the
hills above the school that evening. They'd heard about them recently in
school. Nickell _dissembled_ when he reported they expected "monsters"...
They did not run up a hill armed with only with a flashlight to look for
"monsters," Reader! That only happens in the movies and Joe Nickell's
facile imagination! They went up the hill to pick up pieces of a meteorite!
No, the Flatwoods story was not remotely told. The historical facts
regarding the "Flatwoods Monster" incident are distorted, once again, by a
soap-selling TV show.
Tune in to the actual story, cited above, to tune _up_, sincerely. See,
it's not a story about a giant lizard in a "hover round" "attacking" a group
of Flatwoods residents with a harmful gas. The gas, remember, was actually
an exhaust emitted from pipes surrounding the lower torso of the body. The
lower torso was part of the propulsion system of this giant "metallic"
structure propelling it and causing it to hover. Moreover, apart from the
gas, the "Flatwoods Monster" never made any aggressive or threatening
maneuvers towards the witnesses during the encounter!
More crass inaccuracies?
The nearly 60-years of "sightings" reported by the MQ show were not all
"monster" sightings, as the over-edited Feschino and Friedman footage seemed
to intimate, but were UFO sightings! This is what the two researchers
reported on. _UFOs_, reader! Not _monsters_!
The "Flatwoods Monster" incident, the Snitowsky "Frametown Monster" incident
and the Frametown Hunter incident are the documented entity sightings,
reader. These, and other "monster" sightings... never occurred again! It's
UFO sightings that are ongoing! This was the actual report and testimony of
Friedman and Feschino!
Other "real" entities documented on record in the Flatwoods area are as
follows:
Dec. 30, 1960. Hickory Flats, WV, Located in Webster County and just across
the southern Braxton County border - Witness Charles Slover, 35 years-old,
was driving a delivery truck and sighted a 6-foot tall hairy biped, man-like
creature near the road. This was _unreported_ by the History Channel.
Dec. 7, 2005. Braxton County, 7-8 miles from Flatwoods. A wildlife trap
camera took a photograph of an unknown entity that has been called the
"Braxton Beast." This was _unreported_ by the History Channel. Meager and
unrepeated stuff!
UFO sightings _abound_, reader, on the other hand... not "monster"
sightings! A UFO sighting that occurred in Holly, Braxton County on Nov. 8,
1957 was documented by Jacques Vallee in his book "Passport To Magonia."
Holly is located near Flatwoods. In Case #437, Vallee reports that Hank
Mollohan and eight other local witnesses saw an elongated object that was
12-metres long.
More UFOs! Frametown Area, 1990: A Frametown couple saw several UFOs over
the area of the Middle Ridge area southeast of Frametown. When one of the
witnesses walked outside of the house to get a closer look, one of the UFOs
flew into the back-yard and shot a bright beam of light down towards the
witness. This Frametown incident was documented and broadcast in 1990 by a
national TV show of the time, Current Affair With Maury Povich.
In 1991, Feschino documented crop circle rings in Frametown, WV., which were
recorded by Colin Andrews. Throughout the early 1990s, Feschino also
photographed and videotaped UFOs in the same area of Middle Ridge southeast
of James Knob.
OTHER MONSTERQUEST DEGLECTED POINTS
The Sept. 12, 1952 "Master Map" of UFO locations was not shown. The
flight-path trajectory of the "Flatwoods Monster" UFO was not shown or
mentioned. This was the Washington DC. to Flatwoods, WV UFO flight-path.
Check the included link for same.
The Colonel Leavitt Interview was not shown or mentioned, nor was there any
mention of the sizable West Virginia National Guard involvement in and
around Flatwoods.
There was no reference that the USAF had heavily documented the Flatwoods
incident.
The First person witness-journalist John Barker interview was not mentioned.
Well respected reporter and first person responder A. Lee Stewart, Jr., who
broke the national story, was not mentioned. The drawings of the metal piece
that he found on the farm were not shown.
There was no mention or reference that there were strange metal and black
plastic-like pieces found on the Fisher Farm by the locals, shortly after
the incident.
The five known drawings made by five of the boy witnesses who saw the
"Flatwoods Monster" were not shown." Despite being separated by Stewart the
drawings are astonishingly similar!
The "Flatwoods Monster" color illustrations painted by Feschino from
eyewitness descriptions were not shown.
The 1996 Fred May pencil drawing of the "Monster" was not shown. It depicted
the figure as "mechanical." This was a point errantly avoided by
MonsterQuest!
The Flatwoods reenactment segment did not show the actual "mechanical"
figure as described by Mrs. May and Fred May. The incorrect 1952 "We The
People" mock-up, which depicted the arms and claws was shown instead... and
then senselessly compared to the "Frametown Monster."
Finally, the Star child skull and the entities in Flatwoods/Frametown were
errantly compared. These cases have no relationship to each other, what so
ever, all respect to Lloyd Pye! I'm sure he would agree.
I'd hoped for the best regarding the History Channel. What happened?
"Hollywood" happened, reader... corporate manipulations apart from, and not
interested in, telling the real story... These contrive a mash-up between
two unrelated cases and, "highlighting" what was "explainable," work to
"faux-discredit" both... actually. We were sand-bagged, imo.
The only good thing... the Flatwoods story was broached, at all, in a
no-nonsense manner by Frank Feschino, Freddy May, John Barker, and Stanton
Friedman! People are eventually going to wonder where the "lizard monster"
(sheesh!) came from and how it came to be in Flatwoods at all. That story?
Again, right here:
http://paratopiary.blogspot.com/I personally apologize to the people of Braxton County, Frametown, and the
town of Flatwoods specifically, that the story was not portrayed as it was
related to the production company. We regret their time was wasted. It's
not Frank Feschino's fault that the creative control was well out of his
capable hands... as it will be on _all_ these programs. You pays yer money
and takes yer chances. We all got burned. All the credible stuff went to the
cutting room floor.
Rest assured, though, MonsterQuest at least showed enough to get interest
kindled in _other_ quarters. There's a lot of life left to tell the story,
still! You can bet Frank Feschino will be banging the Flatwoods drum,
verily!
I remain firmly in his corner! There are many rounds left in this fight.
Frank is strong and as focused as he ever was!
Closing, Flatwoods and Frametown residents write to tell me that the James
Knob site east of Frametown is still ufologically active. Right _now_
reader.
Well, I suspect that if ET had swooped in and landed on the pasture that
night while Friedman, Feschino, and myself were all up there on James Knob -
and the Monster Quest people had shot miles of film of it? THAT footage
would have languished on the cutting room floor with all the other pertinent
material, too.
Tha MonsterQuest program regarding Flatwoods was a dissembling hypocrisy...
and a shame!
One last point, in the dodgy MonsterQuest "cooked" portrayal, Fred May,
Stanton Friedman, and Frank Feschino seem to indicate that Big Lizards in
"hover-rounds," plus other monsters, still lurk dangerously in the West
Virginia mountains around Flatwoods. No reader. They are not. Nothing
these men actually reported to the film crew made that indication.
Sincerely, be disabused of the notion that dangerous monsters haunt your
hills and forests! Fred, Frank, and Stan made _no_ such intimation. I was
_there_. I _know_.
alienview@roadrunner.comwww.AlienView.netAVG Blog --
http://alienviewgroup.blogspot.com/U F O M a g a z i n e --
www.ufomag.com